Word: boccaccio
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...harlot. She is a sensual and tragic figure in Renaissance paintings and objets d'art. Her modern face comes straight from Hollywood, embodied most famously in 1963 by Elizabeth Taylor-whose off-screen affair with her own Mark Antony, co-star Richard Burton, recalled the 14th century writer Giovanni Boccaccio's description of Cleopatra as a woman "who became an object of gossip for the whole world...
...world -- everything in the world that excites and frightens, forbids and enchants. To Marcello in La Dolce Vita, woman is "mother, sister, daughter, lover, angel, home." How small and sad and funny men are in comparison! At one end of the spectrum they are like the midget bluenose in Boccaccio 70 (1962) overwhelmed by Anita Ekberg as a sexual giantess -- it's the attack of the 50-ft. libido. At the other end they are like Guido in 8 1/2 cracking the whip in a vain attempt to tame his harem menagerie...
...century Scottish traveler; Lady Nijo (Lindsay Duncan), a 13th century Japanese courtesan who became a Buddhist nun; Dull Gret (Carole Hayman), who led an avenging legion of women into the precincts of hell in Brueghel's painting Dulle Griet; and finally, Patient Griselda (Lesley Manville), made famous in Boccaccio and Chaucer as the model of a loyal, submissive wife...
...heart attack; in Paris. Born in Austria to celebrated acting parents, Schneider made 13 West German films in her teens, mostly costume romances. Fed up with such "Shirley Tempelhof" roles, she moved to France and acted parts from comedy to sultry mystery in dozens more flicks shot in Europe (Boccaccio '70) and a few in the U.S. (What's New Pussycat?). Twice divorced, Schneider was depressed by the accidental death last July of her son David Haubenstock, 14, who was impaled on a wrought-iron fence while visiting relatives outside Paris...
Fiction within fiction is an old form, predating Chaucer, Boccaccio and perhaps even Scheherazade, who provided the first law of storytelling: enchant or perish. Author Wain seems familiar with the rewards and risks of laminating two tales. Wain may not achieve the iridescences of Vladimir Nabokov, modern master of the technique, but he moves from one story to the other without draining color from either. One reason is Giles' ability to regard himself as a character. His comments when both he and his fictional doppelgänger love and lose: "He had been able to contemplate the story...